Secularists Make War on the Church

Marcello Pera, the Italian philosopher and politician, has again spoken out in defense of the Church and the Holy Father in response to the excessive attacks over the sexual abuse crisis.

Last month, he wrote an open letter to the editor of Corriere della Sera, pointing out that these attacks are more to do with a “war” between secularism and Christianity than they are about pedophilia.

He did so again today, in an article for the Italian daily Il Tempo. He writes that “judicial ecclesiastical and civil reparation regarding pedophilia cases and priests is not the true interest” of those who are viciously attacking the Church. “If it really were,” he says, “then similar positions would have been taken on other cases, or the opportunity would have been taken to reflect on our increasingly permissive laws on ethical matters.”

He then poses a question: “Why is child abuse a horrendous crime and the killing of an embryo with a pill a ‘civil achievement’? Are they both crimes, or who makes the distinction between one and the other, not to refer to one as a crime in itself but as something else?”

Senator Pera, a self-proclaimed atheist who co-wrote the 2004 book ‘Without Roots’ with then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, adds that Christians and Catholics have realized that the Pope is not the goal of this campaign. Benedict XVI, he says, is the “one person who has taken these scandals seriously and reported them”, and that his preaching and teaching shield him against “any denigration or insinuation.” The Pope, he says, is being subjected to a Calvary, but that even those who describe this crisis as “altargate” are unable to pin blame on him.

“It is the Church, and more precisely her preaching and Christian witness, that is disturbing [to the attackers],” he writes. “Rightly, Cardinal Sodano and others have highlighted the true goal: the campaign of secularists is against those who defend life, the person, marriage, ethics. This is the culture war that crosses all the West at this time of moral crisis.”

Read it all here.